UWA Summer School at Sinel de Cordes Palace

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Sinel de Cordes Palace is hosting a temporary school during the six weeks between January and 14 February: a group of 23 students from the University of Western Australia, from the 3rd, 4th and 5th year of the architecture degree, is making our headquarters as their own, to work on the theme A building is not an isolated act. Directed by the atelier Aurora Arquitectos and coordinated by Kirill de Lancastre Jedenov, Sofia Couto and Sérgio Antunes, the students are daily confronted with challenges focusing on the specific context of the Portuguese capital. A Summer School developed through an immersion of Lisbon's thought and exploration, in a polyhedral and stratified context during a multifaceted training programme composed of field visits, talks, confrontation of ideas, working sessions and presentations. The aim is to explore the means of reading the project site and how it can be a tool of transformation, and not just a part of the protocol for its implementation.

In this month and a half of immersion, three exercises with different dynamics and deadlines are launched, focused on different methodologies such as interpret, break, copy and distort. With the help of guided visits, the students aim is to understand Lisbon and become familiar with its architecture, in its multiple dimensions scale, density, light, etc. to draw the answer to the problems. By understanding the urban and architectural complexity of Lisbon, the Australian participants develop plans, texts, collages and sketches, identifying representative patterns of Lisbon, to help an understanding of the role of the tile on the facades and the organization of the city. This immersion results in the design of a proposal that is presented and discussed in group, inviting a critic to be part of the final debate.

For the third time this residence is held at Triennale, two of them led by Aurora and the debut with the involvement of the Atelier Embassy, both operating in Lisbon.